{"id":4880,"date":"2015-06-04T23:23:29","date_gmt":"2015-06-04T22:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/?p=4880"},"modified":"2015-06-05T03:13:10","modified_gmt":"2015-06-05T02:13:10","slug":"daniel-clarkson-fisher-interviews-brent-e-huffman-director-of-saving-mes-aynak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2015\/06\/daniel-clarkson-fisher-interviews-brent-e-huffman-director-of-saving-mes-aynak.html","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Clarkson Fisher interviews Brent E. Huffman, director of Saving Mes Aynak [Video]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/iframe><\/p>\nMes Aynak (meaning \u201clittle copper well\u201d) is a desert region 25 kilometers southeast of Kabul. It is an enormous archaeological treasure trove 400,000 square feet in size. Found there are an ancient <a href='https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/library\/buddhism' target='_blank'>Buddhist<\/a> monastery complex, extensive wall frescos, massive devotional temples, and more than 200 life-sized Buddha statues. It is a\u00a0discovery of immense global importance. Mes Aynak is also home to the second largest copper reserve in the world. Directly beneath the Buddhist site are\u00a0mineral deposits worth an estimated $100 billion. The fate of the ancient Buddhist artifacts hangs in the balance as the Chinese begin planning their destructive open-pit style copper mine.<\/p>\nUnder immense international pressure, in early 2009 the Chinese company gave archaeologists three years to excavate and move the artifacts before the copper mine gets underway. But with extremely limited resources, the dedicated archaeologists have made little progress. \u201cWe have only discovered the tip of the iceberg, a mere 10% of the site,\u201d says French specialist Philippe Marquis, who believes this could easily be a thirty-year excavation project.<\/p>\nFilmmaker\u00a0<a style=\"color: #1155cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.medill.northwestern.edu\/about\/faculty-and-staff\/faculty\/brent-huffman.html\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\">Brent E. Huffman<\/a>\u00a0is a documentary filmmaker and assistant professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.\u00a0<a style=\"color: #1155cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/danielclarksonfisher.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Daniel Clarkson Fisher<\/a>\u00a0is an essayist, cultural critic, and literary journalist currently working towards a Certificate in Documentary Arts (with a concentration in literary nonfiction) at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. For more information about Saving Mes Aynak, see the website\u00a0<a style=\"color: #1155cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.savingmesaynak.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">www.savingmesaynak.com<\/a><\/wbr>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mes Aynak (meaning \u201clittle copper well\u201d) is a desert region 25 kilometers southeast of Kabul. It is an enormous archaeological treasure trove 400,000 square feet in size. Found there are an ancient Buddhist monastery complex, extensive wall frescos, massive devotional temples, and more than 200 life-sized Buddha statues. It is a\u00a0discovery of immense global importance. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":4902,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buddhism"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Daniel Clarkson Fisher interviews Brent E. Huffman, director of Saving Mes Aynak [Video]<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mes Aynak (meaning \u201clittle copper well\u201d) is a desert region 25 kilometers southeast of Kabul. It is an enormous archaeological treasure trove 400,000\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2015\/06\/daniel-clarkson-fisher-interviews-brent-e-huffman-director-of-saving-mes-aynak.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Daniel Clarkson Fisher interviews Brent E. Huffman, director of Saving Mes Aynak [Video]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mes Aynak (meaning \u201clittle copper well\u201d) is a desert region 25 kilometers southeast of Kabul. 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